The World according to Fish and Chips

Review: Palty Hairdye Sparkling Blonde

So I am upping my gear and writing a review on a hairdye now! This is partially because I’ve been daring to go blonde – I bought 2 boxes of Palty which sat on my shelf for A-G-E-Ss. In general, I was inspired by Jessica from girl group SNSD who had her hair dyed blonde for her role as Elle Woods in the Legally Blonde musical. She was blonde during a period when they were promoting the songs Genie, Oh! and Run Devil Run.

As much as I don’t think I would suit being a blonde, I thought I might as well give it a try because I’d rather try this big and bold hair colour when I’m still young rather than when I’m 30.

I’ve been using Palty hairdye since last year. It’s good for asian hair and the model on all the boxes is Tsubasa Masuwaka, a popular Japanese model. Along with Palty, she also promotes her own false eyelashes product range and other various make-up accessories and cosmetics.

There are a wide range of colours to use, the most popular being Milk Tea Brown:

The colours I have used are:

Juicy Peach (this was my first Palty)

Sakura creamy

Honey Brown

If you want to use Palty, then take these 6 bullet points of Palty wisdom:

If you have short hair, one box is enough

If you have medium – long hair, use two boxes

The instructions are in Japanese but you can look up people’s youtube videos/ people’s blogs

It’s probably better if you ask someone to help you dye your hair as it can get fiddly

If you wear glasses, pop on your contacts!

The colour doesn’t always turn out as the colour on the box (for me, it NEVER does)

Since this is a product review on Sparkling blonde, I’ll give Juicy Peach, Sakura creamy and Honey brown a miss for now. I’ve dyed my hair previously though, so my hair was already brownish/red. Basically, I dyed my hair Juicy Peach and it turned red. Then I dyed Sakura creamy when the colour faded. I used 2 boxes of Honey brown later on in the year and my hair became a darker, brown shade.

Because Sparkling blonde is a bleach, they give an additional thing, such as a shower cap and a satchet of bleach powder. Other dyes do not have this.

Basically, the dye contained:

PS This is from someone else’s blog. I stupidly forgot to take a picture of the stuff before I began the dye and in my hurry, threw all the stuff away at the end TT_TT

Firstly, I put the satchet into Bottle No2 and shook that for 30 seconds. Then I opened the squeeze tube No 1 and emptied it into Bottle 2 and shook that for 15 seconds. It can get messy so its best to wear some old clothes and put some petroleum jelly on the contours of your face so it doesn’t dye your face too. After that, swap the lid of the bottle for the dye nozzle and APPLY! Its pretty wet and sloshy so make sure you use the gloves provided. I started with the back of my head before working to my roots.

It’s as easy as pie!🙂

Using the shower cap, I kept my hair tucked inside for 25 minutes. I felt a stingy sensation in my scalp and then waddled over to the hairdryer and heated my head for a couple of minutes.

After 10 minutes, my hair actually got lighter. But it was actually…le gasp! Orange! And after an additional 15 minutes, I was freaking out because it was still pretty orange, but because it was stinging my scalp, I took the shower cap off and my hair and rinsed off the dye with cold water (horrible experience…), then I used the conditioner provided.

HINT! – After using the Palty conditioner, rinse your hair again with your normal conditioner!

So this was my hair colour BEFORE DYING (I have a dark neck TT________TT this is why I dislike posting up pics of meself):

When I dried my hair, here was the end result:

It wasn’t as blonde as the box but close enough? It’s still pretty orange though >_> I read other reviews from blogs and people were saying their hair turned out even orangier than mine and a lot damaged….I don’t think mine is actually as orange compared to some people. It could be because I have dyed my hair previously so it’s not just virgin black hair, if you get what I mean. Another downside was I also ran out of dye despite using 2 boxes so the hair on the back of my head is actually still-brown. How is the colour in general? Well…My sister got a heart attack when she saw what I had did when I got home.

Overall rating:

Hair colour: 4/5

Not entirely blonde, but close enough… I still think my results is because I dyed my hair previously. It’s a very bold colour even though it’s not even blonde, and probably won’t suit everyone; I probably don’t suit it too but I had prepared myself already. It’s just something I wanted to do at least once in my life.

*UPDATE*

Ease: 3.5/5

Can be tricky to use if you’re a clutz like me, so it’s really best if you have a friend/family member to lend you a hand with the dying process. I did the dying myself this time (usually my sis helps) and I had to tilt my head left and right and even upside down to make sure I had covered all my hair with the dye, and then it was hard getting the back of my head down properly, too.

Smell: 3/5

People say they like the smell of Palty but I find it rather….a bit too much. It’s not bad but it’s so in-your-face and doesn’t go away for a few days.

Damage/Hair condition after dying: 2/5

BAD. It could have actually been a lot worse so I am lucky. My hair became dry and brittle and severely damaged. I had to use a strong conditioner and I was very careful whenever I blow dried my hair. If I did not use conditioner, my hair would be tangled and extremely dry. This one needed me to use my own condition for my hair though whereas the other dyes do not necessarily need you to do so.

So! There we have it! Sparkling blonde review! I would give it a score of 3/5 in general, because it actually gave me decent results compared to the other dyes (but I’m so ORANGEEEE). If you are wanting to try Palty, there’s really nothing to fear because most of the time, the colours do no even show up as desired (except from the palty bleaches, like this one). It’s very safe and easy to use, with the only problem being that…well, the colour doesn’t always look like the colour on the box.

AUGUST 2012:

I don’t have a picture for the time being, but I had to get rid of the blonde dye because I was looking for jobs and going for interviews and this hair colour was really too much. I dyed my hair again at a salon and my head was back to dark brown, but after a few washes and 1 month, my hair has gradually gone lighter and now it’s a rather shimmery chestnut colour but my hair is still damamged. So, final thoughts being, is this hairdye worth it? Well, judging by how orange I was and nowhere near blonde, plus the damage that has been done to my hair…NO!

I’m not really an expert on DIY hair dyeing (because I’ve never tried it, but I’m interested in it) but I’ve read quite a lot on DIY hair dyeing, and I also watched a few youtube videos on people who bleached their hair. I found out that bleach on dark hair can make hair brassy (I’m not sure what this means but I think it’s somehow yellow or orange-ish). In order to minimize the ‘brassiness’, one needs to neutralize the hair with opposite colors on the color wheel. Yellow – Purple, Orange – Blue. So I found out that if bleached hair becomes orange-ish, then one needs to add some sort of blue toner (or something like that) to balance the orange out. I found that out from this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbj1QLbJ1Dk
And by the way, I love kpop too lol!